Data from: Disturbance-mediated heterogeneity drives pollinator diversity in boreal managed forest ecosystems.

Intensive forest management, together with fire suppression, have decreased structural complexity and altered dynamics of boreal forests profoundly. Such management threatens forest biodiversity and can reduce the provision of ecosystem services. Although the importance of ecosystem services is widely acknowledged, conservation strategies are hindered by poor knowledge about diversity patterns of service provider species as well as on mechanisms affecting these assemblages at different spatial and temporal scales. In this study, we assessed the effect of disturbance management on forest pollinator communities. To do so, we used a large-scale ecological experiment conducted in year 2000, where forest complexity was manipulated with different harvest regimes and prescribed fire. Results were consistent with a positive response of pollinators to increasing habitat heterogeneity driven by past disturbances. Harvested sites harbored a diverse pollinator community, and showed higher spatial and temporal turnover in species richness. Conversely, old-growth forest communities were a nested subset of harvested sites and contained half of their total diversity. Variation in community composition (β diversity) was primarily affected by species temporal turnover. Throughout the season, β diversity was controlled by fire and harvesting legacies, which provide environmental heterogeneity in the form of flowering and nesting resources over space and time. Conservation strategies may undervalue ecosystem services in dynamic, naturally disturbance-driven, landscapes when relying solely on undisturbed forests areas. However, maintaining natural dynamics in early successional forests, by emulating natural disturbances at harvesting, hold promise for the conservation of both biodiversity and ecosystem services in boreal forests.

强化森林经营与火灾抑制措施，已大幅降低了北方针叶林（boreal forest）的结构复杂性，并深刻改变了其生态动态。此类经营活动正威胁森林生物多样性，并会削弱生态系统服务的供给能力。尽管生态系统服务的重要性已得到广泛认可，但由于对服务提供物种的多样性分布格局，以及不同时空尺度下影响这些物种集合的机制认知不足，保护策略的推进受到了阻碍。本研究评估了干扰管理对森林传粉者群落的影响。为此，我们采用了2000年开展的一项大型生态实验，该实验通过不同采伐方案与计划火烧（prescribed fire）调控森林复杂性。研究结果与传粉者对过往干扰所驱动的生境异质性提升所产生的正向响应相符。采伐样地拥有更为多样的传粉者群落，且物种丰富度的空间周转与时间周转均更高。与之相反，原始林群落是采伐样地群落的嵌套子集，其物种总丰富度仅为采伐样地的一半。群落组成的变异（β多样性，β diversity）主要受物种时间周转的影响。在整个传粉季中，β多样性受火烧与采伐遗留效应的调控，这些遗留效应通过在时空尺度上提供开花资源与筑巢资源，营造了环境异质性。若仅依赖未受干扰的林区，保护策略可能会低估动态的、自然干扰驱动型景观中的生态系统服务价值。然而，通过在采伐过程中模拟自然干扰，维持早期演替森林的自然动态，有望实现北方针叶林的生物多样性与生态系统服务协同保护。